By the Ocean
Mostly Cloudy 79 Degrees
8:52 a.m.
Today in this country we’re supposed to celebrate our “independence.”
Apparently, that’s a thing that used to exist. If you look around today, it’s easy to see something terrible happened.
- You have to ask to drive a car.
- You have to ask to start a business.
- You have to send the fruits of your labor to organizations with guns that will hunt you down if you don’t comply.
This is not independence, it is learned slavery.
As bad as that might sound, there’s a far more insidious form of dependence that exists. One that is largely invisible yet controls the lives of most people on the planet.
It’s called emotional dependence.
It’s the virus where you need others to think, feel or do in certain ways so that you can feel OK.
- You need clients to like you, otherwise you feel terrible.
- You need to be validated, otherwise you feel worthless.
- You need to be recognized, otherwise you feel invisible.
- You need X to happen so you can calm down and enjoy your life.
This is not freedom either. It is also slavery. And to the extent you allow it, you will completely close off the potential you have for success.
What good is $5 million in the bank if you are miserable because you are a slave to your own emotional states?
I’ve seen the answer, more than once. The answer is the money becomes WORTHLESS.
The problem is that we have been trained, since birth, to engage with the world in certain ways that foster this type of dependent state.
We have spent years being shown the same dead end equation:
You need X, to do Y, to be Z.
Need is a form of dependence. It repels clients. It repels love. It repels everything good.
Every decision you make is a step towards independence or away from it.
Even when it comes to the topic I wrote about yesterday: generating leads for your business…if you do nothing about that, you become dependent. If you can generate leads on demand, you develop independence.
The choices are everywhere. And most of them are wrapped in fear.
“What will happen if I ______? Who will disapprove? What will the penalty be? Will I get in trouble?”
These are the thoughts and words of a slave. Of someone who has been trained and brainwashed that he is not the authority over his own life.
If that’s how you want to live, you’ll have plenty of friends. Because most people don’t have the spine to rise above that training.
But if you know you came here for something more than being a pawn in someone else’s plan, then take each decision as it comes and run it through a simple test: Does this increase my independence or decrease it?
Choose independence. Then, over time, watch your life and business transform.